Factory Radio
by intodust
Summary: It's only the end of the world.
1. I

Title: Factory Radio  
Author: intodust   
Disclaimer: Dark Angel is the property of 20th Century Fox and Cameron/Eglee Productions; that is, it's not mine. Summary's from Black Box Recorder's song of the same name.  
Rating: R  
Category: AU. Not "Driftwood," exactly.

* * *

Voices raised in song, a Sunday morning chorus muffled by the impenetrable brick wall worn with time and neglect to an echo of once-rich crimson. The church stands like a faded blood shrine against a burning-smoke sky, casting long shadows down the street. It's been there for as long as she can remember, a church, a place of faith, as though the strength of its congregation has kept the rest of the world outside. But it's money, not belief, that keeps it standing, that keeps the ancient-majestic bricks from being replaced with prison walls, that futile shade of grey designed for maximum impact. Faith alone doesn't keep the doors open, like they used to say. And faith hasn't kept the barbed wire fences from being erected around the property. 

But then, what does she know?

They're chanting, a steady rise and fall of syllables in a foreign tongue. Dona nobis pacem. She does not speak Latin but has passed by this building often enough to understand the meaning, if not the words. She took shelter within those walls, once, when the shooting had just begun. The priest had knelt, as those before him, and the words of his prayers had not muffled the sonic noise of machine-gun fire. She'd left before the explosions had stopped, needing to see if Logan was okay, and the priest's eyes had been sad like he thought he was losing a follower.

She walks by the window in time to see the sharp red dot moving like a sunbeam along his chest and knows instinctively that there is nothing she can do. He won't see her, even if she raises her hands in warning, and the fallout would probably kill them all. Her steps slow anyway and someone jostles against her, the smell of unwashed hair and dirty denim. Whoever it is, they're gone by the time she hears the telltale whir and then the bullet slicing air, watches the blood spread across the cassock as he falls. The congregation is abruptly silent, frozen by the audacity and the suddenness of the intrusion. They will only be in danger if they react, if they take offense. If they leave now, they'll be allowed to go home.

And then the church is behind her. She measures her steps carefully so that the soldiers don't think she's running. They've got snipers positioned up and down all of the main streets, riot guards. If they shoot her now, they'll search her body and find the Beretta, find an easy scapegoat despite the obvious weapon difference; she'll go down for the priest and she's got more important things to die for. The voices start again, a unified plea, words cried in mourning. Dona nobis pacem.

These days, she thinks, there is no god. If there ever was. No one will hear them, but they speak anyway, because it's all they can do. Not everybody has a cause.

Dona nobis pacem. Day in, day out. This is life.

Dona nobis pacem. Give us peace.

xxxxx

The closest thing she finds to peace is at home, and even that's stretching the term to something she doubts Gandhi would recognize.

Home is on the fourth floor of the former West Kingston Hotel, though that hasn't been its name for a long, long time. Time passes quickly these strange days, measured for the most part, at least subconsciously, in seconds, as in survived another. Now it's the Compass, because Kingston Hotel collapsed a long time ago and now all that's left is WEST, neon bulbs white and drab near invisible in ever-present unnatural twilight. Home is on the fourth floor, second unit to the left of the concrete staircase, room 2110. Ignore the plastic sheets lining the halls, reminding her of another place, a time before, when all she had to worry about was bribing the sector cops. Flick on the lamp when the electricity forecast looks good, crumple her jacket into a ball and throw it at the bed. Curtains stay drawn during the day out of habit and not actual need; the kind of people who'd look through her window aren't deterred by cloth boundaries.

Four walls, bed, bath, and beyond. Home. Funny how definitions change. She exists here, but she doesn't live. That part's walled off with the names she only just remembered how to say, the sentimental things like never nearing burnout while biking in the rain, manicures and Sibelius.

RAF Kitty lives downstairs. She was never in the military and she was never called Katherine, she told Max, but wasn't it a catchy name? Good for stage work, marquees if she ever got that far. Which she didn't.

Max knocks on her door before she goes up. It's become a habit. This way, if one of them goes out and doesn't come back, at least somebody'll know they went missing. It's a nice thought and an entirely sentimental one; if she goes missing, there's nothing Kitty can do about it, and vice versa. Though that's not entirely true. Max could, if she wanted, probably rescue Kitty, break her out of whatever military prison she'd be in and take her home, but at what cost? She's already got an albatross. Her efforts must be saved, held in reserve until they're needed.

She hears the click-snap of Kitty unlocking the door. "You made it back," Kitty says, leaning against the doorframe with one hand in the pocket of her stained jeans and her eyes luminous. RAF Kitty is a relic, an artifact. She doesn't belong here, but who does? Instead of raising children in some Scandinavian paradise, she designs games for the private lives of military clients, custom-made adventures. A variation of her previous profession. She said once that at least this way she gets to use her brain. She'd chuckled, small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and Max had tried not to think about how much she reminded her of Logan right then.

"Swenson's dead. Shot as I went by," Max says. Information, even gossip, is currency. She doesn't slide her hands into her pockets, assume that casual position, because that would be another few seconds' delay, should something happen. Should something attack.

"The priest? Seems like they're doing everybody these days," Kitty says. She doesn't sound concerned; caring is a burden and burdens require sacrifice. When there's nothing left to give, burdens die. That's just how it goes.

"Yeah. Just hope they don't get around to us soon," Max says. Kitty grins, nods and closes the door. They both know it's a lie and they're conspirators in this charade, pretending that if they can make it long enough, good things will happen. There'll be a reward. The war will be over, except war was never declared in the first place, so how is that going to happen? The suicide rate's up by half, she thinks, except there's no one around to take that poll, make that count. So it's just a number.

She takes the stairs slowly, one at a time. There's no rush. She unlocks her own door, closes it behind her. There are no dark figures inside, no intruders. No misguided siblings waiting to take her home, make her one of them. Resistance is futile, they'd say in a stern, cold voice. Lydecker's voice. And then they would hit her with a taser, crackling blue flame, drag her back to base, and it'd be done.

It would have been done a long time ago, she thinks, except she's not really resisting. She's biding her time, waiting for the right moment. She wonders how many she could have saved she hadn't waited, if she weren't waiting. She would have had to find them, first, and how to decide who's important? The ones closest to her are already down, because they could have told them where to find her, and because they didn't. Firing squad or fit of anger, either way they were executed. Either way they're dead, and all that's left is him, because somebody remembered that he had money, that he had contacts.

That he was worth more alive than dead.

So now she's looking for him. He's become her reason for living. She wonders if this is an example of true love conquering all, or if it's an example of fixating on the only thing left. She wonders if it really matters.

She sits on the edge of her bed and closes her eyes. She wonders if he's still alive. She won't believe otherwise until she sees a body, because that's all there is, all there is to her these days. She hasn't told RAF Kitty who she's looking for, only that she's looking for someone. Kitty'd nodded, told her that she'd had someone like that, too, a lover, a long time ago. He's in the military, one of the invaders. She hasn't seen him forever.

She opens her eyes and sees light through the curtains, flame. She's used to the sight; as long as it doesn't spread, she'll be fine. There's no cause for worry. She wonders if it's the church, the stained-glass windows falling as their curator did. One more murder. She wonders if he'll remember, when she finds him, or if they'll have taken that from her, too. They will have a past or they will have a future; she's unsure whether both can exist at the same time, in the same place.

She'll find out, she thinks, soon enough. She's supposed to meet a contact this afternoon, someone who will know. Someone who will tell her.

She looks at the clock, salvaged from his apartment before the looters came. The rose tint through the curtains is not the remnant of sunrise, but the glow of the fire. She has six hours and she dares not go outside again, this close to zero-hour. She could go downstairs, sit cross-legged on Kitty's floor and watch her hands dance across the keyboard, Kitty with her eyes like Logan's, but it is too dangerous this time. Kitty is an ally, sometimes a friend, but Max does not know her, really, and she cannot afford to be distracted right now.

So she waits, listens to her own breathing, the movement of her blood through veins, and ignores the siren call. Soldiers are stone. She is a soldier. The cold, paralyzing fear sliding across her mind is a product of her imagination. There is nothing to be afraid of.

Nothing but death, and that's not much at all.

The hours pass slowly and the blaze eventually goes out. There is a burst of gunfire twenty minutes later and then shocked silence. She does not sleep.

xxxxx

Flimsy plastic glow of the Macs on the fourth day, running on backup generators like they are just waiting for the electric company to do its job. Like they're surviving a brownout and they'll eat dinner by candlelight and she'll go to work the next day. Like Jam Pony hasn't been demolished, a known hideout for fugitives and anti-government forces, the opposition. Like the world hasn't just gone to hell. "It looks . . . it looks like it's at the border. It just stops. All communication. Everything in and out."

"Like they're cutting us off?" The edge of his desk biting into her hands, hard enough to her mind to draw blood. Cutting us off. No way to articulate the reality, the exactness, the sheer impossibility of all of this happening now.

"Yeah. Like they're cutting us off." He's staring at the computer screens and she knows he's not seeing them at all.

She focuses on him like he knows, like he'll know. "What does it mean?"

A sigh like wind through dry leaves, like there's nothing left. "I don't know."

"Oh." Because she hadn't expected him to, after all. She knows just as much as he does at this point.

He swallows, his voice low and worn. He hasn't slept for the two days that she's been here, since she took advantage of the rain and hid in the shadows along the way. "But whatever it is . . . it's not good."

She meets his eyes, finally, and knows that this, really, is it. "Yeah. I kind of got that, myself."

And the terrible silence afterward. Because what else is there to say?

xxxxx


	2. II

Disclaimer in Chapter One. 

Thanks to those who've left feedback :)

* * *

Fifteen-hundred. Time. Zero hour. The sky is not the soft blue-gray poetry of midafternoon but the boiling darkness of sunlight struggling through thick clouds, a haze of smoke. The result is the color of blood oranges, age-scarred Vietnam, heavy canopy. She knows this without looking; this is how it always is. She can smell the sulphur in the air, a constant presence, and she does not need the accompanying visual. She can barely hear, through the insulation and the thick-poured cement, the clatter of Kitty's keyboard, barely hear the sounds of another person, another life. The Compass was built to last; it survived the post-Pulse chaos, the late-nineties riots, and all that came before. It stands as a witness, she thinks, a passive observer, marked by time and yet somehow outside that force. Like she herself does, removed save for a single cause. In the scheme of things, does it matter whether that cause is shelter or Logan? 

At least the Compass, this part, is hers. She's heard stories about what happens Inside, to the captives, the prisoners of war. It's all government-sanctioned, of course, though there's never an official story, never an authority to comment. Just word on the street. Rumors. If she didn't have personal experience, she might be able to believe that the stories are exaggerated, propaganda and gossip to pass time. Instead, she just wonders what the storytellers don't know, what they haven't seen. What else goes on and how much worse it really is. Hot-cold-sharp-loud-blunt, and all refined by R&D teams. They've had him for three months. Time enough, she knows, but for what? The ones inside come out different, or they don't come out at all, just as with any war, any machine.

But, she thinks, his shell would be better than nothing at all. Still, she will try not to think of him burned out to the point of nothingness. In her dreams, rare as they are, he is himself, as he used to be, untouched by time and this apocalypse. She knows that the chances of this being reality are slim.

Right now, though, if she doesn't leave, she will be late. She doesn't knock on Kitty's door when she leaves this time. No one can know where she is going, she thinks, as far as she can control. As after the Pulse, chaos allows for relative freedom of movement, at least in theory. She knows that they are looking for her, that she is supposed to be among them, camo-clad soldiers on the streets, enforcers, assassins, protective detail for the nameless man. Her freedom comes at a cost. She cannot resist. She cannot act, cannot inspire action. Silence, or the appearance of silence, is the price of her life, this life, or whatever this existence is called.

Her footsteps create an intolerably loud rhythm on the cracked sidewalk. Her reaction to the noise is paranoia, she knows. No one is watching her in particular, no one is seeing her with more than a cursory glance. The guards are not paying her any more attention than they are the others, the passersby. She wonders if she is walking into an ambush and dismisses the thought. If they want to kill her, there are thousands of other chances, thousands of other times and easier ways. If they want to break her, they will have to kill what is left. An obsession. And that is so much harder to destroy than hope, because it's not an emotion and it's not even really alive.

The phone booth stands ahead, a lone figure at the edge of the abandoned market. She remembers streamers, jostling elbows, the constant cry of hagglers, buyer and seller alike. That's all gone now. The soldiers do a sweep every night. The ones caught within the boundaries are taken away and probably executed; she doesn't know why the military would bother keeping them alive. They would have nothing to offer, nothing at all.

She opens the plexiglass door, spiderwebbed by more than close-range impact, and closes it behind her. There's no point, but the illusion of safety is an interesting distraction. She stares at the obscured phone-company logo, the outline of an abbreviation in once-bright blue. The phonebook is missing; paper is a source of heat. Paper burns. What happens when they run out of warmth? Summer, nearing now, will only last for so long.

But maybe this will all be over by winter, one way or another. Anything is possible.

She answers the phone before it rings, sensitive to the change in the air, electrically-charged particles. She has never met the contact in person, face-to-face. She knows that whoever it is, they're in a position of power. They know who she is, what she is, and they know what she wants. They're willing to give him to her, for a price. She's not sure if this exchange will come at any danger to the contact; she really knows nothing about it. Even its gender is unknown, its voice disguised and carefully modulated to betray nothing.

"I've prepared an offer." The rustle of silk, delicate skin and a delicate garrote. She remembers that they used to use mistresses as assassins. It worked, she thinks, because who would be expecting that? After the first time, though, she'd thought they would have learned.

"I'm waiting," she says. She will be polite. Her free hand is clenched into a fist, trembling with the effort of not moving. She's glad it's not a video call.

There is no noise in the background, no music or voices. Nothing to betray a location, an identity. "You know what we want." And she does, but she will not give in immediately. There are steps to be carried out, a game to be played.

"I have money." Taken from the already dead. She does have some principles, still. She wonders if he will appreciate that, when she sees him. If he will care, or if he will comprehend.

A huff of breath, laughter or annoyance. Either way, it is too blank, too monotone, to be considered an expression of emotion. "I don't need money."

"I'll pay," she says, proud of her own lack of emotion, her cool tone. "What condition is he in?" The words are sterile, medical and distant, and she didn't mean to say them. She wishes she could take them back. Even if she is answered, there is no guarantee that the answer will be truth.

"Does it matter? You'll still pay." It bothers her that the voice knows her this well, knows this much about her, but there's nothing she can do about it. What Lydecker knew, his knowledge, they now possess. "He's alive." She can't tell if she's being taunted or if the contact is taking pity on her.

"Good." Her voice is steady, free of any betraying quavers, any expression. She doesn't know if it's true, anyway.

"Tomorrow morning," the voice says.

Her grip on the handset, scratched plastic, tightens. "That's not enough time."

"It will be." Because she doesn't have a choice. She's waited this long and she will find a way. All of this they know. "The docks. Oh-seven-hundred."

"I'll be there." And then the handset is back in the cradle and she's staring at it with no recollection of ending the call. She steps from the booth, heads away from the empty square. The Space Needle is still there, ancient and curved against the terrible sky, but she dares not scale those heights, defy them so obviously and so deliberately. But she has no need for a void, now, no need to escape from the all-too-human aspects of life. Instead, she searches for memories, points in time and space which will remind her, which will ground and center.

She keeps her head down and walks without stopping to where her apartment once stood, the building she shared with Kendra and then with Original Cindy. She stands outside the barrier, looks at the charred walls and remembers. There is where she stood unmoving in the shadows, where she crouched when they grew closer. There is where she stood, and there is where she watched her sister order the execution of her best friend, where she heard the guns being cocked and then watched them fire, each bullet's glowing trajectory etching its own path, its own map of synapses and neurons.

Her defining thought at the time, she remembers, was that it sounded so much more final when it was a friend. In her defense, there was nothing she could have done. There were too many of them for her to intervene, too many special-ops forces, and that was In Between, the day after she lost him and sometime before she found RAF Kitty, or before Kitty found her. She does not know why she went home or where she went after that, after Cindy fell. She has impressions, freeze-frames like negatives exposed to light, but the following few days as a whole are a blur. Sweat, slow-burn at the back of her mind, the trickle of rain and tears down her face. And then eyes, Logan's eyes, looking at her from a woman's face, and life as she knows it resumed.

And now it's going to change again. She has fifteen hours, fifteen hours in which to plan and execute a murder. Zack would be proud of her rationality, she thinks, the coldness of her thoughts, even if he didn't agree with the reason, which he certainly wouldn't. It's just what has to happen. The means to an end. She wonders if Logan would understand. She wonders what she will need to do.

She wonders if Valerie will recognize her. It's been awhile and they've both been busy, both changed. Valerie Locke, formerly Cale, is as of recently a high-ranking figure in the nascent opposition movement. Inspired by her ex-husband's imprisonment to speak out, to do something. To act. And Max . . . Max is harder. That's what it amounts to, really. Before this apocalypse, she would never have considered doing this. In the aftermath, she wasn't particularly shocked when the contact suggested a name, hinted for the first time at the desired result. It makes sense, she has to admit. She will be able to enter where their forces cannot, simply because of who she is and who she isn't. She will be able to enter, to kill, and then to leave. And then one of their enemies will no longer be a threat, they will have the knowledge of a crime to use against her in the future, should they need another reason to hunt her down, and she will have Logan.

Ultimately, only the last matters.

She turns from the remains of her old apartment and walks in the direction of home. She knows where Valerie is, where she lives. Logan told her, afterward, so that she would be able to help the other woman, if something happened. So that she would know. She will use this knowledge to save him.

The rain begins when she's a block from the Compass. Not enough to clear the sky, to wash away the grim and the ash, to have any effect at all. Instead, only the desolate slide of small raindrops down sheets of dirty plastic.

xxxxx

"Shouldn't the rain be clearing the smoke?" A mundane question, discussing the weather. Her clothes are damp from the water. While he works on electronic communication, she's been outside, listening to word on the streets. Hoping that someone, somewhere, knows something. So far, no one does.

His eyes are bloodshot behind the lenses, behind the glass. He speaks without looking out the window, without seeing the weather, his gaze on her alone. "There's too much of it." This, too, she already knows.

She nods, though he doesn't see her, wonders if things get progressively worse. If pre-Pulse life left everyone unprepared for the EMP, has life since prepared them for this? "What do you think it is who's responsible?"

"A foreign government or our own? I can't say. There's nothing . . . it's too soon. Everyone's still in shock, I think. They're scattered." Except for them; they're holding together. For each other or because of each other or because what the hell else is there except madness. They're not unique; there have to be others. The ones around the barrel fires, holding their hands over microcosmic explosions, were sane enough, but they've lived with this all along. What about the ones with houses, children and things to care about?

"Hope they get it together in time. Before it's too late and all that." She wrings out her hair and gets wet ash on her hands. They leave gray trails on her dark jeans. No idea when she'll next get the chance to do laundry. "They're holding meetings in the churches. Saying these are the end times."

"They've been saying that for a long time. Maybe they're right." She looks at him sharply and he looks away. His sigh is unfamiliar, the edge of irritation tempered with the apathy of overwork. "I need sleep."

"Got long days ahead." And she knows that goes without saying. A quick exhalation of laugher at the unintentional comedy of the understatement. There will be no waking up, no reprieve. This is not a dream. Say it again as though repetition will make it real. This. Is. Not. A. Dream.

This is not a dream.

xxxxx


	3. III

Disclaimer in Chapter One. 

Thanks to those who've left feedback :)

* * *

The Compass is bathed in pale orange, bright fire intensity bleached by fragile layers of clean clouds and falling rain. Beads of water slap soundlessly at the window, the shadow of their impact visible through thin curtain cloth. She sits on the edge of the bed, hands folded in her lap, noticing only peripherally the dampness of her clothing. She is preparing for an assassination, she thinks, and as she doesn't have a CO to brief her, she will have to do it herself. She'll begin now, she thinks. 

And sits, then, waiting for inspiration, for a kind of revelation from deep within herself, searching for threads of memory long since buried. She wonders if Valerie will offer her tea, ask her how she's been, be the former society wife, the good hostess. The good hostess pre-whatever-the-hell-this-is, actually, because these days good hostesses are the ones who don't try to shove the barrel of a gun in her face after stepping back to let her enter. She wonders if anyone else will be there, if she will consequently be given more targets. She wonders why this line of thought doesn't bother her more, if it's because her conscience went missing in a haze of broken glass and armored vehicles or if it's because this is really what she's meant to be doing, what she is designed to do. Certainly she expressed more emotion in that now-strange other's real life. But for that to be true, for her current state to be a product of design and a kind of destiny, she would have to believe that emotions aren't right, and so that idea, Manticore curriculum, relies on circular logic, a spiral. An ouroboros consuming itself.

And, she thinks, a long time ago, he told her that it wasn't true.

She wonders if somewhere deep inside, in some distant, walled-off part of self, she is screaming.

But she is not making progress, not going anywhere, and she's only got so much time. There is much to be done before morning, before her life is fulfilled and begins anew.

Footsteps in the hallway. Soft. Running shoes. Kitty, she thinks, and then there's a knock on the door. She doesn't answer, listens to the other woman's breathing. She can't talk now, can't wait, can't risk Kitty finding out. Not because she thinks Kitty will call some version of the police, but because she knows Kitty won't, and she doesn't want Kitty to be involved, doesn't want her to ask. She falls back on the bed and pretends she's sleeping with eyes open. White noise takes the place of Kitty's presence as she retreats. Max stares at the ceiling and sees suddenly, in the cracks and stains of age, the exact relation of pawn to queen in the last game they played before he was taken. She scarcely dares breathe, as if that would disturb the image or make it more real, and she is surprised that she remembered this of all things. It hadn't been a remarkable game; its only significance came from its finality.

She wonders if it's a sign and dismisses the thought. There is no room for signs, especially now, and she doesn't know what it would mean, anyway. She knows what she is going to do, what she has to do, and nothing can change that.

She will wait until dark, she realizes, until what's technically night, because there's less of a chance of Valerie having visitors then, at least of the type that might be prepared for something like this, for someone like her. And because then she'll have to hide the body for a few less hours. Her hands itch, skin crawling with the desire to do something, to move, now, and at one time, she would have run, moved through the city in that fast-paced dance of close-collision and let that action calm her. Now, she thinks, she could run, but nowhere would be far enough. She could sprint to the border, sprint south, but who knows what lies beyond? Mexico, once, Baja and the ocean, and she thinks they're probably still there, but there's no way to be sure.

She imagines running that far and discovering that the world ends at the California border. Would she stop or would she keep going?

She's not surprised to find that the answer, as always, is that she doesn't know.

She wonders what he's doing now. What they're doing to him. If he's conscious. Does he know - will they have told him?

Will he understand, when she does?

But she's getting ahead of herself. There's no guarantee. There never is. There are so many degrees of life; "he's alive" really tells her nothing.

Something shatters outside. A window. A woman screams. The rain is tapering off, ash rising to take its place. The temperature is rising with it, she thinks, as heavy clouds keep the heat from dissipating, keep it hovering around them. Soon the air will vibrate with it and once summer comes, it will be worse. The ones who make it that long will choke on flames when the storm breaks. She wonders if she will be one of them. If he will. All or nothing, she thinks, but really it depends on how he's returned. How he's changed. What's happened to him.

This waiting, she realizes, is making it worse. Too much time, too many questions. All will be answered, but not now. She stands, arcing her back as she stretches, and goes to see if Kitty's home, the need for distraction worth the risk.

She sits, sometime later, on floor of Kitty's unit, her back against the wall and her eyes on the computer screen, broken code flashing within a scratched plastic frame. Kitty works in the dark and Max's eyes adjust automatically, the knowledge that the shadows will obscure her face welcome. There are no nuances here, only darkness, Kitty's face an alien landscape in the monitor's artificial glow. Kitty isn't saying much; she's working with a deadline, but Max is content just to be here, to be nearby. The presence of another gives her something to focus on, an image to maintain, keeps the vast emptiness of her thoughts restricted to a dull roar at the back of her mind.

Across the room, Kitty stands, interlocks her hands. "Finished," she says.

Max stands, too. "I should go."

"No, it's fine," Kitty says. "You don't have to leave."

"I've got somewhere to be." She knows immediately that this answer is wrong, a mistake; Kitty will either assume she's being rejected or she'll want to know where.

"Okay," Kitty says, sitting cross-legged on the air-mattress in the corner. Her eyes are dark, predatory, expressions incongruent in eyes like hers, like Logan's. Even with the closed door between them, Max doesn't feel entirely comfortable. She feels their pull out here, too, though it's fainter, easier to ignore. But he will be here soon, and he is all of Kitty's humanity and more. That, she thinks, is something they can't take from him. It's who he is. Who he's been. Who he will be. It's him, and she doesn't want to know what will happen if she's wrong. Because, quite simply, she can't be.

Standing in the hallway, she looks at her watch. Twilight time. Time to go. Valerie is waiting, though of course she doesn't know what she's waiting for, or maybe that she's waiting at all. Still, she's waiting for Max, waiting for death, and in the split-second before brain function stops completely, will she realize this?

Funny, Max thinks, she never used to think this much about murder. It was just what she was meant to do, and what she didn't. Now, it's been given significance by that for which she's trading, that which she will receive. Murder is the cost of Logan; thus, murder has meaning, should be considered.

The street air presses against her face, metal and ash riding the edge of the sun setting somewhere overhead. She shivers involuntarily and then takes a deep breath, forcing herself to be still, to move without attracting attention. She learned how to do this a long time ago and some part of her, surely, remembers. She will do this and be done, and then he will be hers and her life will as close to normal as possible; she will have all of the available pieces and all she will need to do is reassemble them.

She passes convoys, groups of soldiers, clusters of rag-clad figures hiding in the shadows of doorways and the devastated skeletons of once-strong buildings. Few people are out here by choice, especially now. No one wants to be out after dark, not just because the troops are locking down the city, but because it's so incredibly empty, that livewire sky over the hulks and shells of ruined cityscape. It's empty and frightening and overwhelmingly lonely; it would be easy to think that she's the only one left, that the world has ended and she walks alone amongst broken walls and camouflaged automatons. It would be easy, and if she didn't know where she was going, didn't have this reason for going there, she thinks that she really would believe it. It would be true.

Valerie lives in what used to be a suburb and technically still is, though its identity as a focus of opposition activity dwarfs that title. Max mentally traces the route from that small brick building to the waterfront. She will, of course, arrive before the meeting, but there are plenty of places to hide near the docks. Plenty of places to hide and to be hidden, and to watch. She walks along the sidewalk, past dead trees and barbed-wire, and glances around to make sure no one is watching before she leaps the fence. She can't afford to attract more attention, not now. But there's no one around, no one to see and to wonder at the feat, and soon she's knocking on Valerie's door, doing her best to pretend that she belongs here.

She hears Valerie approaching, steps back from the door so that the woman can see her through the peephole, since her security system is now malfunctioning, the cables torn from their connectors and left dangling like the legs of some hideous electrical spider. She hears the locks clicking open, chains rattling, and then the door is opening and this, this is really it.

xxxxx

The steadiness of his breathing, the soft rise and fall of his chest where he sleeps, where he finally collapsed, too weary to go further than the couch. His hands are folded, graceful bones like some ancient sculpture, the framework of some utterly human design, and the skin underneath his eyes is dark and lined. She dares not stand by the windows and so sits across from him, watching him sleep. Breathe in, breathe out. Life at its most basic, the simple process of maintenance, of balance.

Ash drying on her hands, a fine powder. She should be doing something, but there's nothing to do; the televisions are playing the same broadcast over and over again. Do not be alarmed. Do not be alarmed. She wonders if anyone actually listens, because what else is there to do but be alarmed, but wonder and worry and panic?

And then she thinks that maybe this is the point. If everyone worries now, if they panic, later they will have nothing left. They'll be spent, too tired to protest. So if they broadcast this now, let everyone run themselves ragged over nothing, over this lack of information, they will be able to move faster, move deeper, later. Is it really that simple? It can't be, but it is. She blinks at the epiphany and wants to tell him, but waking him to tell him not to bother seems pointless and he's just fallen asleep.

So she watches him, instead, his face shadowed by the dark plumes outside the window, and hopes that he's not dreaming, because this world will be a hell of a thing to wake up to as it is.

xxxxx


	4. IV

Disclaimer in Chapter One.

* * *

The door swings inward and Valerie is smaller than Max had remembered, or maybe thinner. It's obvious that she hasn't been doing well; there's no need to ask. If this were a social visit, asking would be impolite, and so Max doesn't, unwilling to betray the illusion this soon. The other woman steps back and it occurs to Max that this is one of the few people who admit to having known him. This woman is one of the last remaining ties to him, because written records are no longer true and only memories count. Life is in memory alone, and so this woman is one of the few who keep him alive. In killing her, will he die a little? 

It doesn't matter. She will have him, real and complete, in exchange, and her own memories will rush back, and she will create more. Valerie will not be of consequence.

"Max," Valerie says, and as her eyes widen in recognition, in accordance with the name spoken reflexively, Max sees in them a strange fierceness. She doesn't think it was there before, when she saw Valerie outside his apartment building and later, watching her from a vantage point outside the window. These times have changed everyone and Max is glad; she remembers wanting life to be hard for Valerie. She'd felt a sharpness in her stomach, a cold hatred as she'd explained that the woman had only wanted his money, after all. She'd wanted the woman to feel pain, to know what she'd done to him, and now, she thinks, her wishes have come true. Valerie knows, but hasn't she always? Because he left her, not the other way around.

But it's too late for revelations.

"Valerie," Max says. She glances behind her as though she thinks she's been followed, lets her own eyes go wide and dark, fearful. "Can I come in?"

Valerie blinks. "Yes, of course." She closes the door behind Max and crosses her arms over her chest like a petulant child or like she's trying to hold herself together, as though if she grips hard enough, she won't fall to pieces. Max scans the room for potential obstacles. It's dim, candlelit, and papers cover almost all of the available surfaces. Papers. Printouts. Reports. She wonders how many times his name appears. She doesn't see any visitors, any other residents, any witnesses. "It's it's been awhile," Valerie says. She looks nervous and Max can sympathize. "How can I help you?"

Because, Max remembers, that's her business now, helping the helpless and all that. Fighting the good fight. Taking over where her ex left off, as though he bequeathed his quest to her. Max feels a pang of something like jealousy but pushes it away. She's never wanted his burdens, his duties. There's no reason to feel territorial, especially now. "It's about Logan."

Valerie's eyes shift. A shimmer of hope. "Have you heard anything?"

"No, it's just . . . I was wondering what was he like, before." She wonders if this is what she does, her signature. Ben tattooed his identity across the back of their necks; she asks them to think of happier times, as though that allows her to atone for the acts themselves. She is an angel of death, she thinks. Forever eyes dark and final, and she wonders if that was what he meant, if perhaps his words had nothing to do with life and everything to do with its opposite.

Valerie shakes her head, hair glinting copper in the dim light. "I didn't expect that." She sighs and Max moves closer as though they'll be sharing a confidence, something intimate. "He was a force," she says. "A wave. And everything got swept along with him." And Max sees, finally, that she was wrong. There is no peace in Valerie's memories.

She closes the distance between them in one smooth step and her hands slide across skin and hair as she remembers that he was here, first, his hands across her skin. Her fingers tighten around flesh, the graceful lines of the other woman's neck. Valerie opens her mouth to scream and Max wonders if anyone would hear. She slides her other hand across Valerie's mouth and feels hot exhalations across her palm, the woman's breathing fast and panicked. She adjusts her grip, feels tendons tighten as Valerie tries to pull away, tries to run. Because she doesn't know what she's running from. She still thinks she has a chance, that maybe Max is insane, but that all she has to do is make it to the door. The air is thick with her fear, a sudden, sharp smell, and Max moves, the final, bone-deep crack echoing through her own body. Valerie goes limp and Max steps back, drops the body onto the floor and feels bile rising in her throat.

It's over.

She doesn't vomit, and she doesn't cry, forcing herself to assess the situation, the scene. There is no evidence of a struggle; Valerie's followers will assume she's been taken, but they won't know where to look. They won't know anything, and by that time, he will have been returned to her.

She crouches down, hefts the body over her shoulder. Valerie had a car. She will take it as far as she can and will take the shadows the rest of the way.

She backs the car out of the garage and has to stop the car so she can unlock the gate, swing the wires out of the way. But then she is gone, heading down the street with the knowledge that Valerie is dead, a sick weight in the truck, and that she's halfway there. Only a few hours left and he will be hers again, and things will be right. She's paid for this redemption in blood, and it will be hers. His. Theirs.

She'll make sure of it.

The troops don't stop her on her way to the docks and she's not sure what she would have done if they had. She drives through empty streets, headlights barely touching the desolate night glow, and arrives at the shoreline with adrenaline coursing through her veins. She leaves the car door open, lifts the body and blends into the maze of empty warehouses and metal husks, the signal-chime a techno dirge behind her.

She chooses a building, slides the doors open and looks past the rows of boxcars and the stained concrete floor. There is no one else there, no one using the warehouse for shelter. Her boots echo as she crosses the room, passes the apse where the crane operators used to stand and scales the catwalk. There is a loft in the corner, high enough for her to see out of the windows, and she will wait there, looking for signs. Looking for them. Waiting to see him arrive.

She positions the body as far as possible from the loft's edge and almost out of her sight and stands next to the broken glass of the window, peering out into the night, the sky shifting, boiling with a kind of negative presence that hurts her eyes. Soon, she thinks, soon. She has waited this long and her wait has almost paid off.

The hours pass slowly. The sky does not lighten, but somehow it becomes morning. She descends from her tower, sacrifice in hand, ready to deposit the gift at their feet. The morning air is cold and smells of salt and the sea. Valerie's skin is slack against hers and she tries not to remember the water lapping around her feet as she stood by him in the sand. The water, today, is a bitter plateau, unrelenting and extending unbroken to the horizon. She stands with her back to that expanse, the body at her feet. If they betray her, she thinks, if this is an ambush, if he's dead, there will be no reason for her to have a ready escape. If he's dead, she will take as many of them with her before she joins him.

She takes comfort in the thought that this isn't likely. She's of greater value to them alive, when they can have her do their errands.

The van arrives at precisely zero-seven-hundred. She watches it come towards her, deceptively clean black edges and a silent engine. He is inside. He has to be. The van stops next to her and the driver unrolls his window, dead-lightbulb glass sliding away to reveal bottomless eyes. She doesn't blink and doesn't look away. "Your price," she says, gesturing without looking at the body.

"Yes," the driver says. His voice is unfamiliar and she's not sure if he is her contact. There's no way to be sure, and she's not sure why it would matter. The back doors of the van open and four men leap smoothly to the ground. They are supersoldiers. It's obvious in the familiar way they move, the familiar confidence and grace. They are like her. Three of them come to something like parade rest while the fourth man bends down and retrieves the body, tossing it over his shoulder. He nods to his companions and they return to the van, marching in a single line. They are like her and she will never be like them.

The driver closes his window and she forces herself to stay still, to stand unmoving. The back doors open again and she lets her gaze drift in that direction, watches as they toss him out, as they fling him to the pavement. The doors close and the driver pulls past her, circles around and disappears the way he came. She waits until she can no longer see the van before crossing the short distance to his body.

To him.

She crouches beside him and sees that his hands are bound with rope, its coarse edges rubbing against his skin. His eyes are closed, dark shadows deep amongst so many planes, so many edges. His eyes are closed, but he's breathing and she can hear his heartbeat, and she lifts him gently, her cautious motions strange in their distance. She hasn't been this careful in a long, long time. She stands, feeling the eyes of the ocean at her back, and walks past the warehouse in which she waited. Valerie's car is still there, she sees, and she quickens her pace, arriving quickly so that she can see that the car door is still open and the battery is dead.

He is here. That doesn't matter.

She continues on, past the car, to the city shrouded as with mist. She carries him through the streets, past the patrols and the ruined buildings. She carries him through the streets, and she takes him home.

xxxxx

His eyes glint in the darkness. It's past midnight and he's given up trying to sleep, just as she's given up pretending that there's anything she can do about this. They're watching the city, drinking pre-Pulse wine and watching the destruction from the sanctity of his home. Box seats at the end of the world. "I was just thinking . . . it started on a Monday."

She meets his gaze and recognizes the humor as necessary. "Yeah, it did."

"Apt," he says. His hands strong around the stem of his glass, cautious lest it shatter. The death toll is rising and the citizens have been banned from the streets. They'll be released later, the report said. They'll be allowed back out. It's just for a little while, a nationwide quarantine so that the authorities can clean things up, fix what's been broken.

"Yeah." Stretching, feeling her muscles tighten. Some animals die in captivity, unable to adapt. Forced into cages, locked within walls, they collapse and refuse to get up, to move. They will themselves to die. Suicide. She bites her lip. He raises his glass to his mouth and she watches the troops moving in the streets.

It started on a Monday and neither of them want to ask when it will end.

xxxxx

The Compass is bathed in the early morning shades of red and gray, a pale version of the vivid colors of apocalypse and evening. RAF Kitty opens her door as Max passes in the hallway; she must have been waiting, listening for Max's return. She steps from her unit and her eyes widen as she sees Max's burden, Max's gift. Max nods to her and continues up the stairs. "Oh my God," Kitty says to her back and Max doesn't bother to return the sentiment. She doesn't have time to explain; she needs to get him upstairs, up to her unit, so that she can see the extent of the damage, see what they've done to him and what will happen when he opens his eyes. If he will know her, and if he will remember.

She doesn't release him, doesn't lower him as she unlocks the door, unwilling to lose even those few seconds of contact. His clothes are torn and dirty, but they're not the ones he was wearing when he disappeared. She kicks the door closed and deposits him gently on ice-cold sheets. His spare pair of glasses are on the bedside table and his wheelchair, left behind when he was taken, waits silently in the corner. She does not need to turn on the light to see and she doesn't want whatever additional clarity it would bring. His face is bruised only lightly and she touches his arms gently, raising the sleeves, and notes the marks along his arms. A patchwork of bruises from both hands and restraints, and the marks of needles. She steps back, swallowing an ocean of rage, and covers him with a threadbare blanket. There is nothing to do but wait.

A knock at the door. She turns from her careful study and crosses the room. Kitty is standing in the hallway, arms crossed over a faded t-shirt. "Who is he?" she asks.

And how can Max answer that?

"Mine," she says. She meets Kitty's eyes, Logan's eyes, and wonders if her own are as ancient, as tired. "He's . . . the one I lost."

Kitty nods knowingly. "That's what I thought." She uncrosses her arms, shoves her hands in her pockets. One of her rings glints in the light. "Do you need anything?"

Max shrugs. "I'm waiting," she says. "To see."

"Let me know," Kitty says. She tilts her head, one corner of her mouth moving in something like a smile. "See you around, chica."

Max nods and watches her disappear down the stairs. She closes the door, dividing her worlds, and returns to her vigil, stands by the window and makes sure that no one is coming after him, after them. The clock is measuring night by the time he stirs, shifts underneath the blanket and blinks as he tries to focus without his glasses. He pushes himself into a sitting position, moving as though the action pains him. She does not turn to look at him, using only the changes in his breathing to sense his position.

He swallows and when he speaks, his voice is rough and tired. "Which one are you?"

"The original," she says, wondering how many there have been. Did the first one fool him? Did he think, so long ago, that she'd come to save him? She wonders how long it took for him to stop believing.

She hears his breath catch and then he sighs, and it is only then that she turns from the window. He's pale and his eyes are bright, and she wonders how she could have thought that Kitty resembled him. He is so much more real, based on so many more dreams. "Max," he says. "How've you been?" His tone is dry and it doesn't match his eyes, their watercolor expressions, but she doesn't see how it could. How anything could.

"Good," she says. She leans against the wall, but that casual posture is no longer second nature, and she straightens. "Fighting the good fight."

"Got a long way to go," he says, and maybe it's not an understatement. Maybe what they have to believe, because if they don't know where the end lies, how will they know where they're headed?

She shrugs. "One step at a time," she says.

"One step at a time," he agrees. His gaze is dark and deep. She feels a sudden warmth and thinks that she owes it to him to be more than everyone else, more than something quick and dirty and hard, more than grasping hands, a desperate fuck in the name of life. She owes it to him to be herself as he will remember. To be Max. For him.

"What happened?" he asks, and there is no way she can tell him everything. There is no way he could hear it all, and no way she could make it real.

"Things changed," she says, because she has to say something. "And to you?"

His laugh is harsh and unexpected. He looks away. "I survived."

She closes her eyes and wishes she hadn't asked. But she would have had to, eventually, and it's best that it happens now. "I thought . . . I didn't give up. I got you out."

He nods. "You did. Thank you." And she doesn't want his gratitude. It's what she had to do. What kept her alive, but how can she tell him this?

She nods, feeling hot tears at the back of her throat. "I had to kill."

He nods in acceptance. "I know."

Her breath shudders, but then she's okay, making steady eye contact. "I'm sorry it wasn't sooner."

He shakes his head. "It was in time." He doesn't say what she was in time for, though, and she doesn't know if he's unsure, himself, or if he is protecting her. She wonders if her contact knew, if her contact was trying to save him from that fate or if the timing is entirely coincidental. Logan looks at her without speaking and she looks back, feeling a connection deeper than anything she can remember. She doesn't look away until his eyes close again and his breathing is deep and steady.

Outside, something slices through the air, a crisp wind and then an explosion. He doesn't flinch, doesn't awaken, and an alarm begins to scream somewhere in the distance. But it's only background noise and she listens to the more immediate sounds, the retreating footsteps, static and barked orders. Once the curfew stillness is restored, she lets her eyes drift shut and revels in the anodyne closeness of life.

We were there at the beginning, you and I. We were there at the beginning and now the world is ending around us, and we will watch it together.

xxxxx

"October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or shutting a book, did not end a tale. Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find. 'It is simply a matter,' he explained to April, 'of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.'" - G.K. Chesterton

Thanks to SeenRed for intermittent beta and for the under-thirty requirement, and thanks to those who've left feedback along the way.


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